Craft Room Project: Contractor Etiquette

I debated with myself over posting this because, honestly, it feels like I’m just being cranky about the whole thing. Reality is that I’m not actually just being cranky. It is about general respect and decency from the people you hire to work on property you own and the fact that this company really doesn’t have any.

I’d say I don’t know how I managed to forget to put it in yesterday’s post, but I do know how. It was because there were just SO many things that bothered me yesterday that it got lost in the mess. The first utter lack of respect and concern I experienced from the new crew was them showing up at my door without masks on or anywhere in sight after having parked a massive truck in my driveway, blocking all of our cars in, without asking. I hesitated at first to say anything, though I’m opening the door with my own mask on and Hubby standing with me, also with a mask on, so it is obvious what I felt about the issue. One guy finally asks if I want them to wear masks. After they are standing in my house. Needless to say, after only getting the text that morning, this didn’t start the day out on the right foot at all.

They also didn’t even give their names. Just that they were with the company we hired and were there to work on the project. At that point, I was stressing more about how to deal with the mask issue that I just let it slide. I never did get a name for either one of the guys that worked yesterday.

I was quite honestly concerned about what exactly they were doing yesterday hearing some of the things I did. At one point, I was really concerned they were attempting to straighten a major support pole, one of two that are both problems when it comes to framing, but were NOT supposed to be messed with. I could hear the pounding and feel the vibrations through the entire house, so it was obvious they were at the very least working in that area. I didn’t think they’d be stupid enough to attempt to straighten a pole that was concreted in to the floor, but… I was still worried. That, thankfully, didn’t end up being one of my many problems by the end of the day.

There were a couple of times throughout the day that at least one of the guys came upstairs to either get more lumber from outside or go to the bathroom and he wasn’t wearing his mask. In all honesty, I wasn’t at all comfortable with these guys. I don’t know if it was this lack of respect, the refusal to wear their masks and the rudeness from the extremely loud and obnoxious one or if it was something else, but I just was not comfortable and felt incredibly relieved that Hubby was working from home and there with me. I had not felt that way at all with our first crew.

After they left for the day, Hubby and I do our usual walk through to see what kind of progress they’d made. What they got done, did look good, so quality hadn’t suffered from the previous crew. At least as far as the construction aspect goes. The clean up? That’s a little different.

While the tools and things were mostly organized and confined, the materials weren’t as well cleaned up as the previous crew. They also had a large trash bag sitting in the middle of the room that was never there before, but really not a big deal or a huge concern for either. What annoyed the ever loving shit out of me was the empty water bottle and fast food cup that were sitting on a couple of storage bins under our stairs. This is even more annoying when you consider the large trash bag just a few feet away. I’m feeling like I’m just being horrifically petty and picky at this point and just let it go. It really isn’t a huge deal.

Even with all of these things, I was just irritated and annoyed and not truly pissed. THAT came when I went to use my bathroom, one I’d cleaned the night before, and was forced to clean it before I could use it.

Let me just say, I threatened to quit my job years ago when the company I worked for at the time suggested canceling their contract with a cleaning crew for the bathroom and having us employees clean it instead in an effort to cut costs. I do NOT clean up other people’s bathroom messes. Hell, I don’t even clean my kids’ bathrooms anymore. They do their own. Having to clean up after a stranger pissed me off.

I’m sorry, how fucking difficult is it to check after you’ve used a bathroom to make sure you didn’t leave a mess? I’m not talking a couple of drips here. I’m talking, someone obviously wasn’t feeling awesome and splatters happened. I had crap on the underside of the seat and around the rim and those expected male drips on the seat.

I’ve been a home owner for over 20 years and dealt with a lot of various different service people and contractors in and out of my house. In all that time, it was exceptionally rare that a worker would even ask to use the bathroom and NEVER have they left it a mess. I was absolutely livid.

I wanted to call the company owner up and rip him a new one. The problem? I also want my job finished and finished correctly and I truly believe that if I do that, I just might piss him off enough that that might not happen. Hubby and I spent a significant amount of time discussing it last night and both agreed to just keep quiet about it for now. If anything worse happens, we will say something. Once the job is done, though, we will be leaving a review.

Oh! And if that wasn’t enough, I was absolutely floored at how little they got done. The first picture below is what it looked like when they started their day. The one below is after.

They managed to frame in my access opening in the wall on the left and they built what looks like the framing for the large doorway opening to the rest of the basement. That’s it. For an entire day’s worth of work. Do you have any idea how long it takes for them to frame out an entire house? It really isn’t long at all. Maybe a couple weeks tops.

I’m not entirely ignorant when it comes to construction. I’ve watched my dad work on all kinds of projects for years. And yes, he actually did work construction for a while when he and my mom were first married, so he actually does know what he is doing. It should not have taken two guys all day to get that little bit done. It took a day and a half for the previous crew to do three and a half walls, one of which included a door frame and the rework of half a wall including the build out.

They still have to build out the wall by the storage area to be able to enclose that pole, frame out a new closet on the other side of that area and wrap the duct work on the ceiling so it can be dry walled in. I really don’t want these guys in my house for as long as it is going to take them to do all that. Not with the pace they are going. Hell, it looks like this whole thing my now be going on through mid-January and I was hoping to be done by Christmas.

So, yeah, I’m frustrated and pissed off. I am desperate to get this part of the job done so we can move on to the next part. I’m also hoping like mad that the electrician is better than these guys and that the people that come to do the dry wall are NOT them.